Lido Advisors, a Los Angeles-based registered investment advisor with $20.6 billion in assets under management, has acquired Shore Morgan Young, an RIA with over $615 million in AUM in New Albany, Ohio. The area has quickly become a technology hub and dubbed “The Silicon Heartland,” with a number of new construction projects from Intel, Facebook, Google and Amazon.
Shore Morgan Young represents Lido’s first transaction of 2024 and the first since selling a minority stake to Constellation Wealth Capital, the private equity company created by former Emigrant Partners CEO Karl Heckenberg to invest in the growing channel. Private equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners, which invested in Lido in June 2021, remains a majority owner.
Shore Morgan Young principals Lew Shore, Jon Morgan and Marya Young will join Lido, along with the rest of their team. They will use Schwab and Fidelity for custody, and continue to maintain a longstanding relationship with Lincoln Investment.
“We’ve been very selective with a lot of the deals we’ve looked at, and this was one of those deals where we pushed some chips in the middle and we were fortunate enough to win,” said Jason Ozur, Lido's CEO.
Ozur said the firm’s M&A strategy is centered around geography and talent, and this deal hit both of those.
When the firm acquires an RIA, they take on the Lido branding and become employees and partners in the business.
“We’re integrating partners into our business,” Ozur said. “And while there are aggregators out there who want to buy these businesses, pay out cash, we want to distribute equity. We want everyone rowing in the same direction, so if you distribute equity, you’re really buying partners. And if you have partners who treat the business like it’s their own, the organic growth is then going to follow suit.”
Since Charlesbank invested in Lido in June 2021, the RIA has grown from $6 billion to $20.6 billion across 33 locations.